Legacy
by WriteToEscapeReality1309
Summary: Finally escaping from Galra imprisonment, Josie must team up with a fellow ex-prisoner, a group of kids, and the last two known Alteans to defeat Zarkon's evil empire from taking over the universe. However, what starts as a mission to find & form Voltron, slowly turns into an unraveling of Josie's true purpose. Being the Gray Paladin is more than a title; it is her legacy. OC/?
1. Chapter 1

_I am Josephine Milos_. Bence _was my father, and_ Tania _is my mother. _I am _Josephine Milos. Bence was my father, and Tania is my mother. I am Josephine Milos. Bence was my _father_, and Tania is my _mother_._

_I am Josephine Milos…_

The young woman's thoughts trailed off as she tried to focus on something else other than the pain exuding from her weak body, other than the flashbacks of her past life on Earth, but she was only met with darkness.

A blank loneliness dripped from the walls of her small cell, rose up from the cold metal floor and slithered over her body. The feeling squeezed her like a snake to its prey, suffocating before it ate her up whole.

There was nothing she could do as it spit her back out.

Bones aching and body drenched in blood and sweat, all she could do was let the silent sobs burst from her chest as tears ran down her pale, bruised face.

For over three months now she remained a prisoner of the Galra Empire. As Emperor Zarkon's personal slave, Josephine had experienced mind-numbing pain.

Pain that made her swallow her own blood and deafened her ears from the screams she wailed the first time they tortured her.

That memory was one of her worst ones, but it was nothing compared to what they had made her do today.

It was _bliss_ to what she would experience for the next year and a half in this alien spaceship.

* * *

The events of yesterday rushed back as she awoke possibly five or six hours later, though it felt like minutes.

The meeting with the Emperor and his right-hand Druid, Haggar, was the first thing she remembered. Of course Josephine hadn't been a participant, and more the subject of matter.

When they first captured her, while on her scientific team expedition to investigate some acclaimed alien occurrence in Brazil, and the Galra brought her to their leader, it was clear that Emperor Zarkon didn't want anything to do with Josephine.

A cockroach would've been more worthy to him than her.

But while he didn't care about what happened to the human, there was something about Josephine that inked Haggar's curiosity.

Josephine had always been aware of the space witch's interest in her. And although she had her suspicions on why, it was never clear.

Not until she stood on her knees in front of the two aliens, listening as the Head of the Galra Druids pitched to her king how she could make Josephine an excellent addition to his army.

"With your authorization, my king, I can make her the perfect weapon," the alien hag had pleaded.

The words twisted Josephine's chest so tight with fear she could barely breathe as Emperor Zarkon spared a disgusted glance her way in consideration.

The human had served him well as a slave but could a meager thing like her stand by his side as the perfect soldier?

The Galra Emperor had taken his glowing violet eyes away from her, she felt the blood in her veins stop with her breath the moment he gave Haggar a stern nod, "Send her to the Gladiator Ring. If she proves to be a worthy cause and survives the match, then I give my orders for you to do as you please."

"My deepest gratitude, your majesty," the witch clothed in a dark-purple hooded cloak bowed her head in appreciation before she turned to the Galra guards and Josephine. "You heard our Emperor; prepare the slave for the Ring!"

The woman's brown eyes widened in horror, the white-haired Druid's smirk underneath the hood chilling everything to her very bones.

"_No_, please, no! Emperor Zarkon, please!_ Please!_" A suffered cry escaped from Josephine when the guards dragged her by the electric-shock chains cuffed on her wrists and out the room.

The last thing she saw was Zarkon cracking a laugh at her pathetic attempt at asking for mercy.

The next thing she knew, shackles on her wrists and feet were being pulled to the infamous Gladiator Ring.

* * *

She had been there only once before, about a month after getting abducted, to serve the Galra Emperor while he enjoyed the match between two of his battleship commanders' Champions.

The stench of blood entwined with the perspiration of hundreds of aliens had made her stomach turn as she followed the sovereign to his royal seating. The little food they gave her - if she could even call it that - threatened to erupt out of her mouth as it rose to her throat, but luckily she managed to pass it down.

She had preferred the confinement of a prison cell a thousand times than to attend that arena again.

But she was here, and this time as one of the Emperor's gladiators no less.

It had been one thing to stand being tortured as a prisoner, but having to fight another one - _kill_ another innocent like her… It was barbaric.

* * *

The second thing Josephine remembered in the solace of her cell was slashing her opponent's throat, watching the mighty gray alien fall to his knees as he choked on his blood. Icky, yellow blood that stained her small blade and continued to flow out across the arena ground.

The audience and gladiator had laughed at her just moments before, for choosing such a harmless weapon in comparison to his warhammer. But bigger meant heavier and heavier equaled slower to attack.

With that knowledge in mind, it took everything in Josephine to leave the battle axe behind, and let the Galra strap chainless electric-shock cuffs to her wrists with the pair of daggers. A procedure, she later learned, to keep the armed prisoners in check and from turning on them.

Even if the alien twice her size had done a superb job at seeming menacing in the fighting ring, she knew what happened to him and all the other prisoners in this spaceship.

Just like her, he had been ripped away from his family, from everything he once knew. He had endured torturous pain and been the prey to the loneliness of his cold cell.

That bloodthirsty sneer he wore on his reptilian face could've fooled their spectators, but she knew it was nothing but a front he'd put up. Beneath the beast's fearless facade, frightened and hurting green eyes stared back at Josephine, and although it was enough to not want to kill him, it wasn't enough to stop her from it.

* * *

The last thing she remembered was the pain still throbbing merciless through her body hours after the match.

Zarkon hadn't attended but Haggar's vexing presence had shadowed over Josephine's every move during the fight. And it was clear to the witch, along with everyone else, that she had proven herself a skilled and smart fighter.

"The Emperor's Victor," some of them had called her, marveling at the human's victory.

A victory that led Josephine to drown in waves of guilt at what she had done. But before she became overwhelmed by the nauseating feeling, she had curled up in the cell's corner and tried to calm down as she remembered who she was and where she came from.

_I am Josephine Milos, daughter of Tania and Bence Milos._ This mantra went on in her head as she leaned back against a wall and waited for the grogginess of just waking up to disappear.

_I am. I am. I am._

* * *

Guards swung open her cell door as she scurried to stand, dismissing the familiar ache of another restless night.

The pair of uniformed Galra ordered for her to follow them and she stepped forward knowing better than to ask questions.

One of them stepped out of the cell first as the ever-present shocking cuffs activated on her wrists. With head staring down at the floor she walked behind the guard while the second followed close behind.

Although neither of the purple and furry aliens said where they were taking her, Josephine knew her time to meet Haggar's Druids had finally come.

In her time spent here she'd been lucky not to come across one Haggar's followers, according to what the other prisoners whispered.

An extension of the Galra Empire, the Druids worked under Haggar's order and were a loyal part of Zarkon's army.

Hidden under dark hooded robes and faces concealed by masks that had six glowing yellow slits for eyes, it was impossible to tell what they really looked like or, at the least, differentiate one from the other.

But their appearances didn't matter, the only thing to know was their passion and specialty for body experiments.

It was this that made them worthy of Josephine's terror as she entered the surgical wing of their spaceship.

The sight of the Galran medical room forced her to stop dead in her tracks. A surgical table was placed in the center where two Druids stood waiting. Machines connected with tubes and vital signs monitors surrounded the lavender-lit room while large metal trays containing several surgical tools (some of them which she had never seen before) were arranged around both sides of the table.

"Move it, prisoner!" The guard behind her triggered an electric shock, making the horrified blonde flinch forward with pain.

She looked back at the Galra whose pure yellow eyes told her that if she failed at being placid, the next shock would do more than just make her flinch.

Something inside her snapped at that moment. Maybe it had been the sight of the large and circular slicing blade connected to the surgical be that triggered her fight-or-flight response, but without thinking about it Josephine raised her fist to strike the guard's angular face.

A bolt of electricity shot up from her arms and through her body the instant her punch knocked into the alien's jaw, rendering them both weak on the floor.

She cried out as the first guard kicked her face until she tasted blood.

"Stop it right now!" An unfamiliar male voice shouted at the guard, followed by the sound of the sliding doors sealing shout. "She is here to be enhanced," he walked over to them, the guard having stopped hitting Josephine as she continued to bleed on the floor, "not _killed_."

"She tried to get away, I had to-" the guard explained but was suddenly cut off.

"Just put her on the surgical table, Xaniv," the surgeon sighed and though she remained facing down, trying to regain a bit of strength, she would've bet diamonds the alien looked so done at that moment. "I'm on a tight schedule today and would like to get this over with soon." He certainly sounded like it.

Her body tensed and muscles recoiled in anger as Xaniv and his partner pulled her up by the shoulders. Finally meeting with the surgeon's face, livid brown eyes bore into evil yellow ones as she lifted her chin before lunging herself at him.

The guards tightened their grips around the blonde's bruised arms and pulled her back with force, the Galra surgeon not even batting an eye which infuriated her even more.

She wanted to make him feel as afraid as she was. She wanted to get back at them for what they've made of her.

But all she could do was let it build up inside, until it became too much to contain and she angrily spit it out at the surgeon.

The guards, even the silent Druids in the back, gasped as her spit landed with a splat on the Galran's face, staining his light-violet skin with the red of her blood.

"I am Josephine Milos, and I won't be placid!" she shouted out furiously, thrashing against the guards' deadly-tight hold while he calmly wiped the blood off with the back of his hand. "I will _never_ be placid!"

Her chest heaved and her nostrils flared after she stopped fighting, her brown eyes no longer warm but heated with rage. So different from the cool and collected bright-yellow eyes of the alien, which sent ripples of fear down her spine as he lifted the corners of his mouth in an amused smile that allowed Josephine to see his sharp, white teeth.

The surgeon looked between both guards before settling his eyes on her and let out a soft chuckle, nodding his name, "Ulaz."

Josephine stared back in confusion. Not one Galran in this damn forsaken ship had done something as small as nod in her direction, much less introduce themselves.

Suddenly her legs began to grow weak and her eyelids became heavy with sleep, realizing too late that one of the Druids had injected her with a sedative as she fell unconscious in the guards' arms.


	2. Chapter 2

Josephine tried not to look at her left hand after Ulaz cut it off and the Druids attached a cybernetic hand to her arm instead.

The second they had left her alone in her cell, she tried everything to take the Galran technology off. Pulled at it with her other still human hand. Scratched and bit the area where metal melded into flesh.

She did not care for the pain. This, she was used to. And neither did she care if she died bleeding out. That, she wished for.

Anything to end the hell she went through in this place, Josephine abided as she violently banged the mechanical hand against the wall in hopes to destroy it.

Hearing the raucous coming from inside her cell, the guards opened the steel door and were quick to knock her unconscious with their weapons in an effort to stop her.

She was kept under constant vigilance in the interrogation room for the next two weeks, where the Druids dove into her mind and made her comply. Yet they kept her in chains for another five days, before sending her to the gladiatorial arena again.

This time it wasn't a brute, giant alien as her opponent, but a young and fearful one. The sandy-colored alien with eyes sticking up on his oval head like a pair of antennae reflected nothing but fear.

The sight of his long and round-edged ears shaking on either side of his head formed a lump of remorse in her throat.

She had never wanted to not hurt anyone so much than at this moment.

The hungry shouts for blood from the hundreds of Galrans taken seat to watch the match resounded within her chest.

A sharp pain grew inside her head and no matter how loud she screamed inside for them to stop, the Druids had done a splendid job in winning control.

With no other option, she forced the feeling down to the pit of her stomach as the gates opened.

The power of her cyborg hand activated with a hot and glowing purple light as she stepped forward. Nervously eyeing her piece of the high-tech weapon, the guard in charge of putting electric-shock cuffs on the gladiators worked fast in cuffing her after she chose her trustworthy blade.

It was the Galra that had put her against this inculpable being, she had to remind herself while weighing the light weapon in her right hand.

It was them who'd played with her mind and made her kill.

The young woman who stepped into the arena with a robotic hand and a dagger to end the lives of others was _not_ Josephine Milos.

It was the Emperor's Victor who won victory after victory. But never _her_, the altruistic biochemist that fought for what was right in the world.

Each fight she won as the Victor, with every being- no matter what species - she killed, a piece of who she was died with them too.

Gradually, she realized it was going to be impossible for her to survive if she continued carrying her soft and human heart.

The Galra loved laughing at the human species for being such frail creatures, so easy to bruise and break. And though it cost Josephine to admit it, what they said about her was true.

But with time she learned to change.

By the end of her six months of imprisonment, she had both figuratively and literally turned to steel.

Josephine's heart that had once been wondrous and light, now weighed heavy inside an iron-forged rib cage. In order to survive under the Galra Empire's hold she tried to become what they asked of her, welcoming the crowd's clamor as they hungrily waited for her to give them a show each time she stepped into the gladiator's arena.

* * *

Myzax, the undefeated Galra Gladiator, stood around three feet taller than Josephine, making him the biggest alien she had yet to face. The well-worn armor and the staff in his left hand, carrying an orb of quintessence on its upper end, were enough to let anyone know that he was one of those rare and privileged gladiators.

The monsters she had braved before were nothing compared to Myzax.

With five operations done to her left hand and most of her right arm now, it was obvious this match was the last in testing Zarkon's weaponized soldier.

Josephine's stance faltered at the fearsome realization, which made her earless opponent smirk knowingly as they waited for the starting bell to ring.

If she won this fight, she would be ready to serve Zarkon in his army. She would be sent to _massacre_ families and take over _planets_.

In trying to keep herself alive she had ignored the bigger picture, letting the Galra turn her into one of their monsters, and even allowed herself to_ kill_ for their entertainment.

It made her sick, to realize she had lost the only thing her mother told her to always hold on to: hope. To realize that she had dishonored the promise to her father to look after those who needed protection.

The bell's ringing in her ears disoriented her, and she tried not to vomit as she was hit with flashbacks of all the beings she had killed.

The ghost feeling of her first victim's translucent yellow blood covering her hands blinded her from Myzax's incoming attack. The vibrant purple light of the quintessence, flying towards her, brought her back just in time to jump out of the way.

The volt of dark energy crumbled part of the arena's wall as she rolled her body to safety behind a metal pillar. She barely had time to think before the orb hit one side of the pillar, outing her as the deadly ball of glowing energy boomeranged at her face.

Collective gasps and angry shouts escaped the audience above them when she ducked out of the orb's way and made a run towards Myzax.

The alien's eagerness to end her was becoming a problem, so she got down on her knees at the last minute and activated the blade in her cybernetic left hand to slash his leg as she slid past.

The giant alien bent down in pain, putting one of his clawed hands over the unprotected part below his knee to stop the bleeding.

While Myrax took a few seconds to stand and let his guard down, the crowd chanted wildly for the Victor to finish him. But that wasn't Josephine's intention, as she only wanted a few moments to think and the alien flinging his weapon around had made that impossible, until now.

Slowly standing up, pretending to be seriously exhausted, she took deep breaths and let them out.

Everyone knew there were only two ways of getting out of the Ring: either you killed your opponent, or your opponent killed you. None of those options were going to work for her, though.

Winning this fight meant winning a place in Zarkon's evil army, which she absolutely didn't want. But neither did she want to die, as a small fragment of her heart still hoped she would escape and go back home.

Sensing the alien shift behind her, Josephine decided that making a third option was the only way for her to win this time. Granted her third option would put her under more torture, but it would also give her the time to come up with a plan to finally escape.

God knew how long she had endured as their prisoner, and she wasn't going to take another minute of it.

Myzax finally stood straight again and surprised Josephine by not using his magical staff, lunging himself at her in an attempt to land a brutal punch instead.

As part of her plan she pretended not to see him in time and brought up her right arm to protect her face, his hit throwing her nearly all the way across the arena. Being slammed onto the wall she felt bones breaking and she spit out blood, taking in staggered breaths while looking up at the full stands, entirely taken up by the cheering Galrans.

In the smack-dab center of all spectators sat Emperor Zarkon, at least a handful of guards surrounding his royal seat as he was accompanied by Haggar. The sight of him made Josephine's blood run cold and her breath hitched in her throat.

"I am Josephine Milos," she murmured, trying to stop the fear from paralyzing her as Myzax came closer, "daughter of Tania and Bence Milos." She took her eyes away from Zarkon and moved to stand up. "And I will not-," a painful groan escaped her, definitely feeling a broken rib, "be placid."

Both her hands lit up with the violet energy of the Druids' magic, anticipating the hard impact of Myzax's orb as it was flung her way again. Putting her arms up against her face, she felt the quintessence burn through the metal of her mechanical body parts as the force sent her unconsciously flying across the arena one last time.

Josephine might have been expendable as a human but the Druids, more importantly Haggar, valued their creations too much to let them be destroyed. And as the Emperor's Victor, she was one of the witch's most prized experiments she would not give up on so easily.

At least Josephine hoped she didn't.

She really hoped she was worth even a smidge to the Galra as their potential "perfect weapon," otherwise letting Myzax destroy their technology would do nothing to save her.

* * *

By the time Josephine came to, she had been strapped down to the surgical table for a couple of months, having suffered from a short-term coma after the damage Myzax's staff had done to her.

It had been a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant she wasn't sure, but it had stunned her to know that they kept her useless body alive for that long.

It had been a couple of days since she woke. Like usual they had been hell but at least awake she was able to fight, unlike the months she had spent in total surrender to the Druids' experimentations.

Little by little everything they had done to her in the past year or so had been coming back in the form of nightmares and, in extreme cases, night terrors. For the past week her surgeon and his guards had to come in the middle of the night and sedated her, but tonight Ulaz entered the medical bay alone.

Ever since he first met the human he'd been waiting for a chance to be alone with her, and now that he had earned the trust of his Commander everything was going according to plan. He only hoped Josephine would come to trust him in time, seeing as Haggar and her Druids had broken the human girl worse than the others.

Her shrill screams were heard a hallway away before he entered the room and encountered her thrashing violently on the medical bed. It wasn't another night terror, but the vital-sign monitors she was plugged to spiked as her heart raced uncontrollably.

Ulaz ran over to her and took all the plugs off her, silencing the room from the annoying beeping equipment. While removing a sensor from her chest, he accidentally pressed for the cuffs on her left arm to be released, and Josephine bolted upright on the bed to squeeze the Galran's neck.

"Let me go!" Still dazed from her nightmare, Josephine's eyes were blurry with tears as she growled, "Let me go!" She didn't know exactly what she was doing. She only knew that she was trembling with fear and that she would kill the Galran first if he tried to hurt her one more time.

"Calm down, I'm- I'm letting you g-go," the alien struggled for air, but he told the truth as the rest of her restraints were released with a press of a few buttons on his keypad. "Calm... calm."

"Why are you doing this?" Wide-eyed, she looked down at her freed and stared up at the surgeon with confusion. She finally loosened the grip on his throat, though still kept her only functioning hand around it.

Not moving from where he stood, Ulaz's yellow eyes softened a little as he lowered his voice, "I want to help you. Listen to me-,"

"Is this another one of your sick tricks?" Josephine pulled back her hand with disgust. "'Cause my mind is pretty much yours for the taking already." To think she thought they had put her through every kind of torture possible - Here he was, playing with her again.

"Please," the tall alien sighed, "just lay down. I am not here to hurt you."

"Not yet," she spat back, but without much strength in her body to retaliate she obliged to rest her head against the flat pillow of her bed.

Where any other Galra would've stroke her hard across the face, the surgeon simply ignored her spiteful comment and continued with the check-up.

"It appears the parts malfunctioned during your match with Myzax. The hits you took from his orb destroyed them entirely," he said, connecting her back to the monitors.

The gentleness in him as he went about doing the routinely examination didn't go unnoticed by Josephine. Ulaz's drastic change in character, compared to the way he acted with company around, made her all the more nervous as he continued, "As you can see we were able to repair the left hand while Haggar's Druids are still working on the arm piece. I couldn't salvage any scrap from that one, but a new-and-improved one should be ready for you soon."

"Good to know, Doc. That's _so_ gonna help me sleep well at night." She masked her dread with sarcasm, an easy way of defense as she waited for him to do something to cause her agonizing pain.

"For now," he took out a syringe filled with a clear substance and she sucked in a sharp breath, "let's just hope this will."

The needle pierced the side of her neck until the strange liquid entered her bloodstream, nothing else to do but wait.

Wait for the excruciating pain- She waited, but the unpleasant feeling never came as her vision blurred.

Slowly, Ulaz turned into a vague figure, the bright lights in the ceiling dimmed, and the steady beep of the heart-monitor lulled her to sleep as she finally let her heavy eyelids close.


	3. Chapter 3

For the first time in over a year Josephine woke up feeling rested.

"What the hell did you give me?" She asked Ulaz in the lonely company of the medical room once the Druids and the guards had exited. Her voice was not laced with dispute, but genuine curiosity. It went as far as her brown eyes brightening with wonder, something the young scientist hadn't shown in a while. "Why didn't you mention it to the Druids?"

His sharp eyes darted to the closed doors and then lowered down to look at her on the medical table. He slowly nodded, like he was trying to convince himself to do something, and finally asked, "You remember what happened last night?"

"Was I not supposed to?" A little unnerved, Josephine sat up on the medical table. The electric-shock shackles around her ankles weighed her legs down and she crossed one ankle over the other for better support.

"I don't know," mused the Galra surgeon as he turned his back to the blonde and started cleaning his medical tools. "Perhaps."

She could've easily taken him down at that moment, wrapped a strong arm around his neck and locked him in a death-choke hold. His guard was down, they were alone, and there were no cameras in the room; it was perfect timing.

Yet, she remained quiet on the cold and metal table.

There was something off about Ulaz, she gradually realized. Something softer, less volatile than the other Galra she had crossed. It was almost as if he sympathized with her, the wild idea popped inside her mind.

"I'm just relieved it worked on you." He put down a pair of large surgical scissors and turned to her, the smallest hint of a smile on his thin, white lips. "Did you rest well?"

The resemblance to a normal, caring doctor's tone in his voice threw Josephine off-guard and she couldn't do anything but look back at him, speechless and confused.

There was something definitely odd with Ulaz, she confirmed to herself.

His slanted eyes glanced at the sealed doors again, Josephine curiously following his gaze before she turned to meet his eyes. "There is such a thing as good Galra, you know," he finally said.

_Good Galra_, the words echoed in her mind and she stared at him, expecting the alien to show any sign that implied he was kidding.

His eyes remained on her, arms three times the size of hers crossed over his chest in waiting response, but she refused to believe him.

There was no doubt of Ulaz being different from the other Galra she encountered, but she never went as far as describing him as good. Her missing limbs replaced with robotic tech proved this so, and she wouldn't be as stupid to put her trust in someone who caused her this much pain.

It was ridiculous for him to convince her otherwise, yet the part of her that thirsted for freedom drank in his words like they were fresh, sweet water.

Her brown eyes wandered over to his Galran mask on the side table, realizing that she had nothing else to lose.

"Okayyy…" She breathed out, reached out her left hand to smooth out the growing ache on her forehead, and tried to wrap her mind around all this. "So-," she put her mechanical hand down on her lap and shook her head in disbelief. "So you're telling me what, exactly?..." She looked up at him, remembering to keep her voice low, "Do you plan to help me? Or are you just here to continue to drug me so I can stop fighting you?"

Ulaz opened his mouth to say something but Josephine continued to speak, finding it hard not to raise her voice as anger bubbled up inside her, "Because last time I checked, Druids were _drilling_ my arm while you stood over and watched." She stood up from the medical table and walked over to face him up close, her shackled ankles only adding to her rage. "You let them mess with my head. You ordered to fill my body with drugs by hypodermic injections, while you _opened me up_ and cut off pieces of _me_!"

"I didn't have much choice. Listen-," Ulaz reached out in an effort to calm her down but the girl angrily swatted his clawed hands away.

"No." A dry chuckle escaped her chapped lips as she pointed an accusing finger at the Galran, "You must have a real twisted definition of the word if you think using others as lab rats is being _good._"

He ran a hand over his head, his fingers going through the white strip of hair running down the top center of his scalp, "I understand how confused you must be, but you have to-"

"I am not confused!" she exclaimed, though it wasn't loud enough to be heard from outside the doors. Drawing in a breath to steady the quiver in her voice formed by the ugly lump in her throat, she added, "I am angry. I am tired... I am _dead_ inside." She swallowed. "Do you understand _that_?"

"I understand perfectly, Josephine," Ulaz nodded solemnly, and her heart stumbled over the sound of her spoken name.

For a second, he even sounded like her father, and she stood motionless at the memory of him. Her father and her had never really gotten along, always seeming to disagree and fight over Josephine's future, but she loved him despite their differences. He had always wanted what was best for her even if she couldn't see it.

Bence Milos was her hero, and she missed him. Terribly.

"That is why I need you to trust me." The Galran put his large hand on her shoulder, grateful when the human girl didn't back away as he finished, "It will be no easy task, but I promise you that I will do everything in my power to help you escape."

A defeated and suffered look settled on her features, making her appear much older than she was. Looking up at the hulking creature in front of her, she fought back the tears brimming her eyes as her voice cracked, "There is nothing good about this place. Pain and torture is all I've experienced here." An involuntary tear slid down her cheek as she nodded at last, "But I'm willing to hope."

"Then I'll start by explaining what it was that I gave you last night." Ulaz took away his hand from Josephine's shoulder and dug into the inner left pocket of his Galra suit. The blonde wiped her tears away, and stared quizzically at the small glass vial of clear liquid as he held it carefully with his fingered claws. "The Druids have been working on this for a while, to use it on captured enemies, so they could infiltrate territory by brainwashing them to subconsciously carry out their plans." Watching Josephine's eyes widened in alarm at the news, he quickly added, "It did not work on any of the prisoners, not in the way they wanted it." She only furrowed her eyebrows in further confusion as he handed over the glass vial.

Josephine held it with her only functioning hand, right arm still not operating as it should yet, and listened intently to the Galra alien, "The genetics in their DNA rejected the drug's effect and…" She saw guilt settle in his eyes for a moment as he cleared his throat and breathed out, "Many deteriorated and died before the drug was enhanced a second time. Now it's nothing more than a powerful sedative to us aliens. I only hoped it would work on your human."

Carefully, she opened the vial and leaned her nose in a bit to give it a waft. "Hmm," where she expected a potent smell, she was met with an odorless substance. "Does it have a name?" she asked and handed it back to Ulaz.

"Mirk-O," he answered. "I'm not cleared for access to it, so I ask you to keep this between us. Along with everything else, of course."

"Yeah," Josephine nodded, still a little unsure of how things had unfolded so quickly, but she decided to listen to the part of her heart that said it was safe to trust him. "But I need something else," she surprised herself by calling after the Galran, who had started walking away the moment she agreed to keep his secret.

Ulaz stopped and held his Galran mask down as he turned to her with a questioning look.

"If I'm gonna carry a robotic arm and hand for the rest of my life, I need them to feel like they're a part of me and not just weapons."

Looking at Ulaz, she shifted on her shackled feet for a reply.

The Galra Empire had taken so much from her already. They stole her freedom, kept her from her family and life on her home planet, and strapped her down on a surgical table to torture her for months on end.

Like a great miracle Ulaz offered her an escape, and she was going to start by taking whatever little control she had left over her humanity.

Surviving this place would mean nothing if she gave away the girl she had been before, she knew that now.

"I have an idea on how to do that, but it will take some time," he said, and again Josephine wondered if the Galran would ever stop surprising her.

"Thank you." Those two words that she never thought she'd say to his kind escaped her lips more easily than she cared to admit.

But after all, it was something the old Josephine would've said.


	4. Chapter 4

Josephine carved with her blade another day of being locked up behind a steel door on her cell's floor. Five-hundred forty-eight tally marks covered half of the ground she stepped on. A year and a half, give or take.

With a weary sigh, she blew away the few steel flakes and traced over the straight line with her index finger.

It was weird, feeling the tenderness of skin back on her hands and right arm again. Even after a month since Haggar let Ulaz add a layer of cybernetic human-skin to cover Josephine's metal body parts, it took her a minute to adjust every time she woke up to normal-looking arms.

She hadn't realized how used she was to her old metal left-hand and right arm, but she was glad for the new upgrade. Obviously, she worked ten times as hard for it and had to suck-up to Haggar and her legion of scary Druids for weeks, but the outcome was worth it.

Signs of them being robotic were still there, in the fine metal rings around the knuckles of her left fingers and the half-metal back of her right hand. Yet they looked more like modernized fashion accessories, if she didn't pay much attention to them.

Whatever the case, she thanked Ulaz for making it possible.

In the couple of months following their first secret conversation, Josephine had come to look at Ulaz as a partner. Possibly even a friend, as he was the only Galran that looked after her while in captivity.

Their secret meetings were not often but it helped tremendously to know she could trust in someone. Ulaz mostly took advantage of his solo check-ups on Josephine to give her intel on the Blade of Marmora, a secret group of rebels against Zarkon's rule, and discuss their plans for her escape.

Only problem was: Josephine couldn't remember what they had talked about after.

Ulaz worried that if she kept taking Mirk-O this would happen.

The drug was already sketchy enough when used on Galra, but when Josephine asked him for a daily dose each night, the side effects were clear in about two weeks.

It started with cloaking her first distasteful encounter with Emperor Zarkon, blurring the memory from her mind until she couldn't see it in her sleep anymore.

Josephine found the memory-wiping side effect to be nothing else but a perk of the alien drug, especially since all her fading memories were the ones filled with pain, torture, grief, and generally bad experiences.

However, her subconscious seemed untouched as she still knew not to trust anyone but Ulaz. As if the drug could only wipe away what was on the surface, pushing the important memories deeper within. Still, there were rare times when the Galra surgeon came into her cell and she stood defensively before the realization dawned on her.

Nothing was too sure about Mirk-O, but it had been the only thing keeping her alive. Without it, Josephine doubted she'd still be.

The Galran only met her with a frown, couldn't help but notice the fading color of her brown eyes to a gunmetal-blue, and he had warned her then about the dangerous side effects of the drug.

As a biochemist she knew the risk of taking Mirk-O, but she reassured Ulaz that the reward was larger than her eyes changing color and losing some of her memories. Josephine refused to give up on it, as her body had not rejected the drug and her sleeping patterns were improving due to the lack of nightmares.

Although she didn't remember about Ulaz and his connection to the Blade of Marmora, the instinct to trust him and heed his words was still there.

That was what mattered, Josephine told herself as she stood from the floor.

A circular fluorescent light in the four-wall cell guided her to the wall opposite of her tattered mattress(courtesy of the Galra for her outstanding behavior in the past six months, of course).

Drawing out the blade in her mechanical right hand, artist fingers tightened around its handle to carve a new bird onto the landscape picture in her cell's wall.

It was a beautiful picture of the pond in the Garrison's recreational park. The space academy she was raised in for lack of better words.

She loved that park, basically grew up in it her father used to say.

Off to the side was a rough sketch of a little girl who fed the ducks near the water. That had been the start of the carved picture: five-year-old Josie Bean, as her mother called her, standing near the pond to feed the "fluffy little ducklings."

She began with that bright memory of her mother taking her every morning to that park, and continued with the figure of her mother sitting comfortably on a bench.

Then, she added grass, flowers, and trees to shade them from the hot sun.

Josephine tried her best to make the image as lively as in her memory, but in the dark purple of her cell it appeared glum. She only wished she had paint to color the feathers of the mockingbird as she finished her artwork and slumped down against the wall.

The blade retrieved into her mechanical wrist, running her right hand over it to feel the tender skin that almost made her feel human again.

It had been a bold move for the Galra to implant her with such dangerous weapons, but, before Mirk-O, their mind-torture and brainwashing had placated her and was effective in making her comply.

_Well, not anymore._ She thought as she balled her robotic left hand into a fist, feeling the synthetic tendons under the layer of skin tighten, and relaxed it after.

For all the damage Mirk-O could make to her body, it certainly had its benefits. The drug not only erased her bad memories but it kept the Galra from brainwashing her or violating her mind.

The tables had turned, and now it was her who toyed with their minds, making them believe they controlled her. Thanks to their defective drug, Josephine was closer to escaping their prison more than ever.

Crawling over to her bed, she lifted the mattress up and dug her hand into the inside of its secret compartment. She pulled out her second to last dose of Mirk-O from under the mattress, took off the lintel stuck to the syringe and stuffed it back inside as she settled the mattress back down, sitting on the stiff bed.

The old metal coils creaked under her weight before she let out a steady breath and uncapped the needle.

Like usual, she held it up to the side of her neck and closed her eyes as she spoke, "I am _Josephine Milos_. _Bence_ was my father, and _Tania_ is my mother. _I am_ Josephine Milos. Bence was my _father_, and Tania is my _mother. . ._"

Memories of her family and life on Earth flashed across her mind, holding tightly onto them with the worry that the drug would take them away, too.

However, she reminded herself about the briefing tomorrow and she knew that the last conversation between Ulaz and her couldn't fall in the hands of the Galra.

"I am Josephine Milos." With another intake of air, she breathed out and injected herself with Mirk-O.

Laying back on the bed, she gave the drug a few minutes to take effect. She opened her eyes again, not knowing they were no longer the warm chocolate-brown that reminded her of her mother- not when she hadn't seen her reflection in over a year- and struggled to remember what Ulaz had said about their plans for tomorrow.

It was for the best, she told herself, knowing that she would remember it like instinct when the time came.

* * *

The electrical buzz of the light in her cell's ceiling woke her up before Nadiz came for her. Although the alien wore a mask like every Galra guard, Josephine could tell it was him who had escorted her through the spaceship for the past month. Over time she had learned to pick up on her guards' different quirks and mannerisms.

She knew Xaniv was left handed as he always carried his alien gun with his left arm. When he talked to his partner, which was often, he rolled his 'r's like Ulaz.

Yuzta, the one who she hit the day she met Ulaz, liked to point his gun at her wherever they went. Even if she had proven a loyal prisoner to the Galra Empire and, as part of her act, didn't lash out anymore.

Nadiz was the stoic one of the three. He mastered the silent walk of Death, footsteps lighter than air, but he always knocked the door to her prison cell, giving her a few seconds for her to straighten up, even though he wasn't supposed to. This inclination to be respectful towards her probably had to do with the fact that he had seen her fight as the Emperor's Victor in the arena on multiple occasions. Ever since she had won that title and kept it worn on her head, the Galra tended to treat her better than the other prisoners, or at the very least didn't bother her with insults and humiliation like they did to the others.

"Will you see the match, Nadiz?" she asked when they stopped at the arena's back entrance.

A large number of prisoners lined up in chains as the Galra assigned them all a match. Their alien faces wore fear, pain, and fatigue, and although something in the back of her head told her that she should understand what they felt like, she couldn't. Standing surrounded by them, she didn't remember ever being in their place, lashed by whips, and dragged by the electro-shock cuffs on their ankles and wrists.

Although she should have. She was a prisoner, just like them. . . Wasn't she?

"Can't miss it," Josephine turned her attention to Nadiz, who sounded as excited as he could get for a stone-cold alien, "everyone here knows yours are the best."

"That's only because I know how to put on a good show." She smirked, not knowing why, but sure that this one would be surprising. Making sure her arm and hands worked, with a bright purple light emitting from the metal rings on her left-hand fingers and through the markings on her right arm, she told her guard, "And trust me, I'll make sure this one is great."

"I'm betting you will, Victor," Nadiz nodded and let out something that sounded like a chuckle, but it was hard for her to tell behind his masked face.

Josephine walked away and into the Ring, dressed in a black suit of armor the Galra had designed for her complete with hood and mask. They didn't want a human as the Emperor's Victor since the name had stuck. They wanted a soldier, a weapon, to bring fear upon their enemies.

But they had forgotten that she was more than that.

"I am Josephine Milos," she closed her eyes behind the Galra mask she wore, stepping into the arena bursting with the crowd's howling cheers, "daughter of Bence and Tania Milos. I am… I am… I am…"

She opened her eyes expecting to fight against a massive alien beast or cyborg, like always, but was taken back when the starting-bell rang. A young man stood a few feet across from her.

* * *

"What the hell?" His right arm lit up like hers; metal for flesh and quintessence for blood. Another weaponized soldier for the Galra Empire, she realized while something else itched at the back of her mind.

She stood still for a few seconds trying to make sense of it. Their audience clamored for a fight but the man looked confused at his disguised opponent, wondering what held them back.

"Come on," she muttered, snapping her head into the arena again. "Come on," her grip tightened around the hilt of the long dagger that shot from her left hand. The brightening glint of its sharp blade cheered the crowd on, but Josephine couldn't bring herself to attack.

Not only because he was the first human she'd seen in a year in a half but because. . . she recognized him. The familiarity of his face struck her, unforgiving, just like his swinging fist.

Pain stung her jaw and brought her back to the match. She had been too wrapped up in her own mind to see that he had started the match the moment she whipped out her blade.

Another attack from him as his right arm wrapped around her neck and tightened, forced her to bring her dagger up and stabbed into the metal of his hand. He immediately let go, backed away as she tried to breathe again.

From the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Haggar. The white-haired priestess crossed her arms, attentive from where she sat on the front row.

Josephine turned to her, and even if she couldn't see past her hooded face, Haggar's presence in the arena was enough to make Josephine sweat.

This was another test. She had failed the previous one, and now they pitted her against one of her own. Someone she knew, no less- Because she was certain she'd seen those dark gray eyes before.

He attacked again. His blows packed a deadlier force, and after she had stabbed him, Josephine couldn't blame him. To him, she was nothing but another Galran brute, dressed in fancy armor and ready to kill for glory. He didn't know that underneath the suit stood a woman, just as broken and frightened as him.

Her fans booed from their seats, seeing as their favorite Emperor's Victor got her ass kicked by a human slave with a robotic implant for an arm. Haggar's impatient stance didn't make things better, either. Before doubt crossed the High Priestess' mind, Josephine brought herself to her feet and played the part.

She ignored the fragmented memories of him passing her in what resembled a school's hallway, both wearing orange uniforms as they sat several rows across each other and ever so often met eyes in the room filled with more equally uniformed people.

They had been students at the Galaxy Garrison School Academy- she remembered clearly now.

She had almost forgotten about it all, and it scared her that she couldn't recall many things from her life when about a year ago she could. Ulaz's words and his plan rang in her head like a distant bell, and she paid close attention to the sound as she fought Shiro.

He needed to know it was her in the Ring with him, but the damn Galra armor she wore wasn't helping. If anything, it inclined him to beat the hell out of her as she deflected his double-edged axe before it sliced into her shoulder.

"Damn it, Shiro, it's me," she breathed out but the Galra tech didn't allow her to be heard. As much as she wanted to rip off the mask, revealing herself to him was a big no-no. Zarkon had her dressed like this for a reason and her taking the mask off in front of a human, one of her own, would be like betraying the Galra.

She had come so far to let a mistake like that ruin everything, so she continued to attack Shiro while thinking of another way to get them both out of this one alive.

With her left hand, she shot a small amount of energy at him that slammed him against one of the metal pillars. The blow wasn't enough to burn him but it did sear a hole in his shirt that exposed him further.

And it gave Josie an idea. She couldn't take off the Galran mask, but that didn't mean Shiro couldn't take it off for her. Or rather, burn it off her face.

Josephine rolled her shoulders back and relieved some of the tension before she picked up the axe from the ground and sighed. "Here goes nothing." It was an idea; she never agreed it was a good one.

She threw the axe and it flew into the pillar a few inches above Shiro's black and white hair. He turned his head up and eyed the axe but before he raised his hand to take it, Josephine aimed her right arm and blasted the axe with another surge of energy.

Drunk laughter mixed with wild shouts came from the crowd, watching as the Victor played with her kill.

But evaporating his weapon wasn't a tease; she was warning him. "Come on, level with me," she pleaded and couldn't help the smile of relief on her as he raised his glowing metal arm.

She went first, giving him a fraction of a second to meet her power with his own.

Josie's feet slid back on the arena dirt at the impact. He sure as hell packed a punch. But to be fair it wasn't like she was at her full potential, and from Shiro's confused and equally frustrated look in his eyes as he stood up and pulled away from the pillar, she started to question if he knew it, too.

After a couple seconds, she gained half a foot on him but still had a long way to go as he fought to push her back. Not enough to blow her up, she realized, but enough to keep her at least three feet away while he figured out what exactly was her play.

Josephine fought steadily, putting the extra effort in her body language to make sure she seemed like she was really trying to overpower him. Shoulders tensed, legs muscles tight as she struggled to move forward, the blade in her left hand out and ready, a tremble in her right arm as she held it up, it was all part of the act to keep the attention away from the fact that she was practically guiding her opponent to take a shot at her head.

Once their hands were raised and both their faces were at the end of the other's purple ray of quintessence, she weakened her attack and made it look like Shiro was slowly getting the upper hand.

Finally, Shiro overpowered her as she took the blast to the face and the crowd went silent with the Victor's fall.

Yeah, it definitely hadn't been a good idea. The ringing in her muffled ears was nothing compared to the harsh pounding in her head. She allowed herself a minute, sprawled on the arena soil as if she were dead, the remnants of the mask scattered on the ground an arm's length from her.

Everyone thought it was over. It most definitely felt like it was over. And yet, the bell's ring announcing the Champion's win came to an abrupt stop as Josephine coughed awake and moved herself to stand up.

Unpleasant whispers immediately formed among their big audience, most of them clearly betrayed when they realized they've been rooting for a human girl and not a Galran soldier.

"You. . ." Shiro moved closer, absent-minded in his own shock, and nearly lost footing. "You-you're human. . ."

_Yes! It's me, Josie!_ "No," she willed her eyes cold, even though her heart broke at what she was going to have to do to him. She smirked as she cast a proud look into the crowd, shouting, "I am Emperor Zarkon's _Victor_!

While the hope in Shiro's eyes plummeted, the crowd burst into cheers at Josephine's words. At least she had not lost them; she still needed Zarkon's followers to trust her if Ulaz's escape plan was going to work.

"And you, are nothing but my next victory," she looked back and met Shiro's eyes for a second, before she brought her leg up and kicked him square in the face. He staggered back as the crowd went wild and she spun forward and kicked him once more in the same spot.

The shock finally fell and anger took its place as he lunged himself forward and tackled her down.

Her back touched the ground with a loud thud and a pained groan left from her chest as she grabbed Shiro's wrist and stopped his oncoming punch.

"What have they done to you, Josie?" He asked and she only responded with a jab to his stomach.

He quickly doubled over and Josephine pushed him off her, rolling herself on top of him and wrapped both hands around his neck.

"Listen to me, Shiro." She kept pressure on his throat but not enough to kill him as she let her hair fall around her face and hide her mouth, talking fast, "As much as it seems like I'm trying to kill you, believe me I'm not. I have a plan to get us both out of here alive but first; do you remember my first time in military practice at Garrison? How they pitted me against you for one-on-one and me being the youngest one of the group, you promised me not to hurt me?"

She loosened the grip on his throat a little more, still keeping her hands coiled tightly in illusion, and he relaxed his fingers around her wrists, confused as he recalled, "Yeah but you made me swear not to take it easy on you?"

"That oath still stands. This match needs to look as real as possible for my plan to work. Don't take it easy on me, Shirogane, 'cause I won't take it easy on you." Her hands strangled him for real this time and instead of shooting her a panicked look, there was an understanding in his eyes that hadn't been there before.

Shiro took his hand from her wrist and swung it at her face, making painful contact with her jaw, and she weakened the hold on him just enough for him to push her away. Once he was up and she tried to stand, he returned one of her many kicks and hit her in the stomach.

It wasn't as hard a kick as he could've done, but Josie groaned all the same as she hit the ground again. In a moment, Shiro knelt on one knee beside her and grabbed a fistful of her black hood and brought her close to his face.

"What exactly is your plan, again?" he whispered worriedly to her.

"It needs to be a tie," she moaned back and noticed a flash of guilt in Shiro's eyes before he delivered another punch to her face.

Josie spit out blood, watching as he moved to stand and saw an opening at the last second. With no other choice, she landed a punch on his groin and winced herself when Shiro let out a cry. A low blow, but it had to be done.

Now standing, she went to grab Shiro's arm but he caught up to her, twisting her in against him and held her in a stranglehold.

"That. _Hurt_," he whispered to her again, with a twinge of anger as he squeezed his arm around her neck.

"The quintessence," she ignored him, having thought of something more important. "We need to emit a blast strong enough to render us unconscious but not dead."

"On three," he agreed and Josie brought her hands around his metal arm, gathering all her strength before she pulled and flipped him over.

_One._

Shiro's back hit the ground as Josie stood leaning down, hands on her knees as she breathed out heavily.

_Two._

Shiro rolled over with a grunt and Josie straightened, spitting out the remaining blood in her mouth.

_Three._

His arm rose as he stood up and she met the blast of quintessence from his hand with her own.

The ground trembled beneath their feet, the crowd's roars muffled in Josie's ears as she exerted all her power against Shiro's.

It was just him and her and the burning heat of their colliding energy in that arena. It was their tired screams coming together as their Galran weapons tore each other apart and then. . .

Then, there was just darkness for Josie.

* * *

**A/N:** Thanks Shiranai Atsune for your lovely comment! I hope you and my other readers enjoyed this chapter!


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